Preface

During the past century, human life spans have almost doubled, and travel and communication happen with an ease and speed that would have been considered science fiction only a few generations ago. Remarkably, the pace of innovation is actually increasing over that of the past.

Science has now advanced to the point that those on the cutting edge of research work with individual atoms and molecules. This is the defining characteristic of the new metafield of nanotechnology, which encompasses a broad range of both academic research and industrial development. At this small scale, the familiar classical physics guideposts of magnetism and electricity are no longer dominant; the interactions of individual atoms and molecules take over. At this levelroughly 100 nanometers (a nanometer being a billionth of a meter, and a human hair being 50,000 nanometers wide) and smallerthe applicable laws of physics shift as Newtonian yields to quantum.

Nanotechnology holds the promise of advances that exceed those achieved in recent decades in computers and biotechnology. Its applications will have dramatic infrastructural impacts, such as building tremendously faster computers, constructing lighter aircraft, finding cancerous tumors still invisible to the human eye, or generating vast amounts of energy from highly efficient solar cells. Nanotechnology will manifest in innovations both large and small in diverse industries, but the real benefit will accumulate in small cascades over decades rather than in a sudden, engulfing wave of change. It is not the "Next Big Thing" but rather will be any number of "next large things". Nanotechnology may not yield a result as dramatic as Edison's lightbulb but rather numerous gains as pervasive as the integrated-circuit-controlled lightbulbs in the traffic lights that are ubiquitous in modern life.

Although the lightbulb breakthroughs will be few, there will be numerous benefits taken for granted, such as the advantages that the automated intelligence of traffic grids provide to major cities. This should not be a surprise, because nanotechnology is not an invention but rather a range of fields of study and applications, defined by size, that use tools, ideas, and intuitions available to innumerable scientific disciplines. Thus nanotechnology offers tremendous potential for several key reasons. Materials and processes at that size have unique properties not seen at larger scale, offer proportionately greater reactive surface area than their larger counterparts, and can be used in or with living organisms for medical applications. As a result, familiar materials can have completely different properties at the nanoscale.

For example, carbon atoms form both coal and diamonds, but with different molecular arrangements. Scientists now know that carbon molecules at the nanoscale can form cylindrical tubes, called carbon nanotubes, that are much stronger than steel and conduct electricity, neither of which is possible with the carbon found in coal or diamonds. Carbon nanotubes may one day provide key breakthroughs in medicine and electronics. Likewise, nanotechnology can provide breakthroughs in industrial uses. The electrical current produced in solar cells or batteries reflects the flow of electrons from one surface to another. Nanotechnology has already enabled the demonstration of a vastly increased surface area of electrodes that allows electrons to flow much more freely, along with corresponding improvements in battery performance. Safer, cheaper, and cleaner electricity and electrical storage would obviously have a dramatic impact on our society.

Another reason nanotechnology holds so much promise is that it enables solutions at the same size scale as biological organisms, such as the individual cells in our bodies. Engineered materials are possible, such as ultrasmall particles made in the exact size to perform like a "smart bomb" in delivering drugs in the blood stream. Other applications might detect cancer when it is only a few cells in size. Future convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology may combine biological and man-made devices in a variety of applications, such as batteries for implanted heart pacemakers that draw electrical current from the wearer's glucose rather than from surgically implanted batteries.

Yet another important facet of nanotechnologyone that underpins both its promise and the challengesis that it embraces and attracts so many different disciplines that researchers and business leaders are working in, among them, chemistry, biology, materials science, physics, and computer science. Although each field has tremendously talented people, each also has its own somewhat unique training and terminology. Almost like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, each group approaches the molecular level with unique skills, training, and language. Communication and research between academic disciplines and between researchers and their business counterparts is critical to the advancement of nanotechnology.

With the diversity of professional cultures in mind, a central goal of this book is to promote communication and cooperation between researchers and industry by including similarly diverse articles written by experts but accessible to everyone.

The depth of scientific talent and the substantial resources being devoted to nanotechnology are a tremendous cause for optimism for both near-term and long-term gains. Ultimately nanotechnology will yield greater impact than information technology or biotechnology has. However, the tempo of technology is not set by the velocity of novel discoveries, but rather by the pace of what the market will embrace and pay for. The medium term in nanotechnology will be difficult and delayed by issues far beyond scientific research or product prototypingnamely, by the long, difficult process of new products gaining traction in the marketplace. To reach the stage of a viable product, the innovations will have to overcome issues such as how they are integrated, how much power they consume, and how they are controlled. Only then will the marketplace vote with dollars on the technology. For these reasons, another goal of this book is to highlight these issues so that a broader audience can address them with its respective understanding and resources.

This book is organized into four matrixed sections. Section One is focused on the history and development drivers of innovation. The first chapter highlights a historical example from the early days of the biotechnology industry as a cautionary lesson about a new industry developing with new tools and tremendous promise. The promise of nanotechnology to solve the world's energy problem is outlined in Chapter 2, along with the impact the solution would have on solving other problems as well. Chapter 3 is a discussion of the role played by expectations in the development of an industry.

Section Two focuses on the talents, roles, and motivations of the main players and individuals, along with the organizational factors that drive technologies forward or limit their impact. Chapter 4 presents the vision of a venture capitalist who takes a long-term view of nanotechnology as the nexus of disruptive innovation, and Chapter 5 outlines current investment decisions in nanotechnology. Chapter 6 outlines the U.S. government's role in funding research and establishing policies for the safe and effective use of nanotechnology. Then Chapter 7 discusses specific areas of academic research, and Chapter 8 explains how technologies developed there are brought to commercial use. The role of U.S. patent law in commerce follows in Chapter 9, with a discussion of its impact on the advance of nanotechnology. Chapter 10 explains why entrepreneurs are the key drivers of change in a new industry and help it advance by taking tremendous personal risks. Chapter 11 discusses the challenges within a large corporation that is developing technology products. Finally, Chapter 12 presents an overview of technologies developed in federal laboratories and describes how they are commercialized.

Section Three considers specific areas of innovation: nanoscale materials (Chapter 13) as well as other areas where nanotechnology is making a dramatic impact: nano-enabled sensors (Chapter 14), the microelectronics industry (Chapter 15), and drug delivery (Chapter 16). This part concludes with a chapter (Chapter 17) specifically on the intersection of nanotechnology and biotechnology, a combination that holds enormous potential to impact medicine and health.

Section Four suggests that the convergence of science at the nanoscale foreshadows a transformation and revolutionary change in society (Chapter 18) and highlights ethical considerations in the advance of nanotechnology (Chapter 19).

The Epilogue features a prescient speech given in 1983 by the late Richard Feynman, the legendary physicist who first envisioned nanotechnology.

Working at the level of individual atoms and molecules allows researchers to develop innovations that will dramatically improve our lives. The new realm of nanotechnology holds the promise of improving our health, our industry, and our society in ways that exceed even those of computers or biotechnology.